How to Evaluate Landscape Proposals

Step one: normalize the scope

Before looking at any number, build a single list of every task you expect and mark each proposal against it. This almost always reveals that the proposals are pricing different work, which makes the raw numbers meaningless.

Pay particular attention to the items that are easy to omit and slow to be noticed: irrigation inspection, parking island care, tree assessment, mulch refresh, and documentation. Those five account for most of the gap between a low bid and a complete one.

Step two: score the provider, not just the paper

Once scopes are comparable, the differences that matter are about delivery rather than task lists. These are the questions that predict whether the work will actually happen as described.

• Will the same crew service the property, or does it vary by week?
• Who is the single point of contact, and what is their response commitment?
• What documentation is provided, in what format, and how often?
• What is the stated response time for an issue reported between visits?
• Can they provide commercial references for properties of similar type?
• Are they commercial focused, or is commercial a side line to residential work?

Red flags in a landscape proposal

Some signals reliably predict problems. None of them are disqualifying on their own, but each one is worth a direct question before signing.

• A price substantially below the others with no explanation of why
• Vague scope language like general maintenance or as needed
• No mention of documentation or reporting anywhere in the proposal
• No stated response time for issues raised between visits
• Auto renewal with a long notice period buried in the terms
• No commercial references, or references only for residential work
• Reluctance to walk the property before pricing it

A simple scorecard

Score each proposal from one to five in each category, weight them, and compare the totals. The specific weights matter less than the discipline of scoring the same categories for every proposal rather than reacting to whichever one made the strongest impression.

Walk the property with every bidder

The single most useful hour in this process is walking the site with each bidder, separately, and listening to what they notice.

A contractor who has done this work for years will point at things unprompted. A drainage problem in the corner. A tree that is going to be an issue. Irrigation heads that were set for a planting that is no longer there. That is expertise showing itself, and it is very hard to fake on a walk.

A bidder who spends the walk talking about their company rather than your property is telling you something too.

It also protects you later. A price quoted from an aerial photo has no knowledge of your slope, your access, or your condition, and every one of those becomes a change order once the work starts.

A price quoted from an aerial photo has never seen your slope, your access, or your condition.

References, and the question that actually works

Every contractor has three happy references. Calling them tells you very little, because they were chosen to be called.

There is one question that gets past that. Ask the reference: what happened the last time something went wrong?

Every landscape relationship has a bad week. A crew quits, a truck breaks down, a storm arrives on a service day. What you want to know is not whether it happened. It is whether anyone called, whether it was fixed, and how long it took.

The second question worth asking is how long they have had the same crew. That single fact predicts quality better than almost anything on the proposal.

Normalising the price, worked through

Three bids arrive. One is well under the others, which makes it either a bargain or a warning. Normalising tells you which.

The method is to convert everything to a cost per visit, then add back what the cheap bid left out. Nine times out of ten the gap closes almost completely, and what looked like a discount turns out to be a smaller service.

Making the decision, and writing it down

By this stage you have normalised the prices, walked the site, and made the calls. The decision is usually clear, and the last job is to record why.

This matters more than it sounds. If you chose the second cheapest bid, somebody will eventually ask why. A one page note written now, while the reasons are fresh, answers that question in a way memory will not.

It also gives you a baseline. In eighteen months, when you are judging whether the relationship is working, the note tells you what you expected to get.

1. Record the normalised cost per visit for each bidder, not the headline price
2. Note what each bid included that the others did not
3. Write one line on what the site walk showed about each contractor
4. Note what the references said about the bad week
5. State the choice and the single main reason for it